Financial ROI (profit) is vital to green investing. This can sound jarring to green-minded folks because for quite a long time, the profits of most businesses have come at the expense of human and ecological health. Yet the underlying system holds much promise. I’m seeing a new generation of green businesses that align profits and green objectives to create powerful engines for economic transformation. These businesses are building the reality envisioned by a previous generation of green non-profit leaders.

Financial ROI is important because it impacts the rate and scale at which this new reality can unfold.

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I’d like to thank Green Options for inviting me to join their team of writers.

I’ve been an eco-entrepreneur my whole career, over 25 years. These days, I help connect green leaders and the general public in new ways that accelerate benefits to people and the biosphere.

One of the most vital, energetic, and promising links between green leaders and the general public is green investing. In my opinion, the world of finance shapes our economy even more than government, yet it is one of the least understood fields, especially for environmentally-minded people.

Leadership in finance is essential to getting a grip on society’s ecological footprint. Still, most green activists focus primarily on pure education and government policy. A smaller group of activists focuses on corporate policy. For the past 7 years, I’ve focused exclusively on how to actually finance green businesses and infrastructure projects. In the weeks ahead, I’ll be stepping you through what I’ve learned, and bringing some of these murky concepts to light.

I first started writing on this theme in March of this year. If you’d like to review the earlier installments of my ABC’s column, please visit these original ABC’s posts on my personal blog.

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